Memorial

More information

Sgt James K. Park was a chauffeur before he enlisted in Houston, Texas on 8 March 1943.

He was reported missing in action on 23 November 1944, when he was believed to have been wounded by shrapnel. Due to continuous enemy fire, soldiers from Park’s company were prevented from searching for him.

He was officially declared dead one day and one year after he was reported missing in action.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) collected thousands of unknown sets of remains from battlefields in Germany, and labeled each set with an X-number. None of the remains that were found could be associated with Park by AGRC technicians, and his remains were declared non-recoverable.

In December 1946, AGRC personnel recovered an unidentified set of remains from a civilian cemetery at Langerwehe, Germany, on the northern edge of the Hürtgen Forest. German locals said the remains were originally found by a local resident on 1 August 1946 in the forest northwest of Laufenburg Castle near Jüngersdorf. According to a German police officer, three weeks after the burial, an English soldier of a demining company took the identification tags away.

Following the recovery, the remains were processed at the Central Identification Point at Neuville, Belgium, and buried as an unknown, labeled X-4731 Neuville on 23 March 1949.

Following thorough research and analysis of American Soldiers missing from ground combat within Germany’s Hürtgen Forest, a DPAA historian concluded that there was a possible association between X-4731 and Park. The remains were disinterred on 28 June 2017 and the remains were sent to the DPAA for analysis.

To identify Park’s remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, as well as dental and anthropological analysis.

According to documents in the X-File, Sgt Park was killed by a mine explosion or schrapnel.

A rosette is placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at Margraten Cemetery to indicate he is accounted for.

Sgt Park was given his final resting place on 27 October 2018 at Dresden Cemetery in Barry, Texas.